Monolog für zwei

A real performance for this young actor, future greatest French movie star with Delon. It is talky talky, but so good, interesting this tale about the movie system for young actresses. This short feature made by Godard, the leader of the Nouvelle Vague brings something rarely told about at this time. And I am sure that I missed something too complicated for me. After all, it is a Godard's item....

A fascinating short sketch of a film from director Jean Luc Godard that exists somewhere within the same cinematic universe as his debut picture, À bout de soufflé (1960), whilst simultaneously presenting certain elements that would later reoccur in his first proper masterpiece, Une Femme est une femme (1961). The film is light and frivolous and seems to exist for no other reason than to highlight the natural joie de vivre that film-making can present, with its ironic dialog, broad humour and two incredibly likable performances from Jean-Paul Belmondo and Anne Collette. Belmondo plays a young writer who is visited by his ex-girlfriend, Charlotte, who he thinks has come crawling back to him. As Belmondo attempts to charm, berate, insult and endear himself to Charlotte it becomes clear that she has only come back to collect a few personal items before leaving with her new boyfriend, a filmmaker, in his fancy sports car.

During the encounter, Belmondo speaks incessantly in an almost stream of conscious approach filled with wit, pathos and subtle shading of his character. He teases Charlotte for her current relationship that he feels is doomed to failure, criticises her for coming back to him, and trivialises any warm reminisces in an attempt to fool himself into thinking their relationship meant nothing. As Belmondo pour his heart out and attempts to remain cool, Charlotte stays mostly silent. She thumbs through old magazines, adjusts her hat and her dress in the mirror, teases and mimics Belmondo playfully behind his back and occasionally pipes up to remind him of some important part of his tirade that he can't quite put into words. It's the kind of torturous battle of the sexes thing that Godard would continue to look at in later films, from the aforementioned Une Femme est une femme to Masculin, feminine (1966) and later with Slow Motion (1980). Here, however, it is played lightly and for laughs, with Belmondo's farcical revelations and trivialities being thwarted by the charmingly coy performance from Collette, who lights up the screen like Godard's later heroines Seberg and Karina.

The film is a continual joy to watch, but as ever with Godard, you can easily draw deeper interpretations on the manufactured artificiality of cinema and on the creative act itself. Is it any surprise that one of the earliest shots of Belmondo is of his character loading paper into a typewriter and hashing out a few words? Maybe not. Is this whole sitcom sketch simply a way for Belmondo to wrestle with his feelings in an attempt to pin his emotions to the page for the book that he claims to be writing? It's an interesting idea and one that works within the context of Godard's later interest in meta-textual self-reference, especially with films like Le Mepris (1963) and In Praise of Love (2001). Regardless of such deeper interpretations, Charlotte and her Boyfriend (1960) is a lovely little film from Godard; nicely structured as an affectionate pastiche/answer to Cocteau's Le Bel Indifférent, and perfectly performed by the two lead actors.

Charlotte et son Jules (1960)

*** (out of 4)

Short film from Jean-Luc Godard about a man who is visited by his ex-lover. While he tries to belittle her, she just sits there quietly mocking him. I've only seen two other films from Godard but you can certainly tell that this early film is his. Several of his "techniques" that would show up in Breathless are here. The dialogue is sharp, fast and funny making for a pretty neat little film with a terrific ending.

Une histoire d'eau (1961)

** (out of 4)

Short film by Jean-Luc Godard and Francois Truffaut. A woman travels through a flooded France when she meets a man who begins to tease her. The entire running time is basically just talk, talk and more talk and none of it is very interesting. My movie books and the IMDb credits Godard as co-director but he's not listed in the credits and nothing in the film looks like his style.

This entertaining short features a man who is visited by his ex-lover. The moment she arrives, the man starts his constant barrage of speech; the woman doesn't say much. She just mocks the man and pretends she isn't listening. She pulls faces at him and larks about; while the man is trying his best to get her back in his life, then in the next sentence he says he hates her. A playful selection of dialogue that ends with a thud.

Jean-Luc Godard must have known he would come back to Charlotte and Her Jules very soon after making it, since he recreated in Breathless, made at or around the same time as this last short he made before going head-on into features, a nearly 20 minute version of this scene only with a little more of an equal playing field. Meaning in this case it's all about the man, or rather "her" man, and in a small-term experimental sense it's quite successful. It's basically just a monologue Jean Paul Belmondo delivers to his girl following her return from being with "another" man, who apparently is waiting in his car on the street below. The monologue is so ranty Charlotte (who as a clever and sneaky and telling trick by Godard gets top billing) only gets in two lines, one of them her exit, "I just came for my toothbrush", with all smiles going on, trying on a hat, occasionally whistling, while her man goes on and on.

It was one of Godard's so often quoted idioms that it became cliché and then went back around to original and then in a circle forever and ever that "the history of cinema is men photographing women." It is in this case that Godard practices this full-tilt; while Belmondo (with Godard dubbing) gets all of the audio time, pontificating, complaining, praising, sarcastically reminiscing about the good times and bad times and harping both poetic and the self-conscious about himself and her, the camera is almost always on the pretty Anne Collette. Godard would return to usually keeping his camera on his "lady" be she Anna Karina, Bridgit Bardot or Anne Wiezemsky, but for right now it's perhaps best to consider this a practice run. Thankfully it's an extremely entertaining and curiously rigorous practice run, showcasing the attention to the opposite sexes plus flexing such muscles as breezy and quick cuts and the freedom and rough edges of a hand-held black and white camera.

Ah, those were the days, before say the 1980s and 1990s came around.